Chapt3rs Guide to Getting Started with Bitburner
This is an introductory guide to getting started with Bitburner. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide for the entire game, only the early stages. If you are confused or overwhelmed by the game, especially the programming and scripting aspects, this guide is perfect for you! Note that the scripts and strategies given in this guide aren't necessarily optimal, but they will give good progression in the early game and help you get started. Introduction Bitburner is a cyberpunk-themed incremental RPG. The player makes progress by raising their stats, earning money, and climbing the corporate ladder. After reaching certain criteria, the player will begin receiving invitations from Factions. Joining these factions and working for them will unlock Augmentations. Purchasing and installing Augmentations provide persist upgrades to the player and are necessary for progressing in the game. The game has a minimal story/quest-line that can be followed to reach the end of the game. Since this guide is only about getting started with Bitburner, it will not cover the entire "quest-line". Gameplay Basics Beginners' FAQ How do you connect to another server How do you hack? How do you hack with a script? How do you open ports? How do you join a faction? Help! My scripts aren't making very much money First Steps I'm going to assume you followed the introductory tutorial when you first began the game. In this introductory tutorial you created a script called "foodnstuff.script" and ran it on the "foodnstuff" server. Right now, we'll kill this script. There are two ways to do this. One, you can go to the Terminal and enter: kill foodnstuff.script Or two, you can go to the "Active Scripts" page (keyboard shortcut Alt + s) and press the "Kill script" button for foodnstuff.script If you skipped the introductory tutorial (which I don't recommend doing), then ignore the part above. Instead, go to the "Hacknet Nodes" page (keyboard shortcut Alt + h) and purchase a Hacknet Node to start generated some passive income. Creating a generic hacking script Now, we'll create a very generic hacking script that can be used in the early game (or throughout the entire game, if you want). Go to your home computer by entering the command home in Terminal. Then, let's create a script called "early-hack-template.script" by entering the following command in Terminal: nano early-hack-template.script This will take you to the script editor page where you can write code to create Scripts. It will be helpful to consult the Netscript documentation, especially for Netscript Functions and Netscript Script Arguments. Enter the following code in the script editor: target = args0; moneyThresh = args1; securityThresh = args2; nuke(target); if (fileExists("BruteSSH.exe", "home")) { brutessh(target); } while(true) { if (getServerSecurityLevel(target) > securityThresh) { //If the server's security level is above our threshold, weaken it weaken(target); } else if (getServerMoneyAvailable(target) < moneyThresh) { //If the server's money is less than our threshold, grow it grow(target); } else { //Otherwise, hack it hack(target); } } This script takes in three arguments. The first argument, stored in the target variable, defines the target server that this script is going to hack. The second argument, stored in the moneyThresh variable (short for "money threshold"), defines the minimum amount of money that must be available on the target server in order for our script to hack it. If there is less money than this "money threshold," then our script will grow the server rather than hacking it. The third argument, stored in the securityThresh variable (short for "security level threshold"), defines the maximum security level the target server can have. If the target server's security level is above this threshold, then the script will weaken it before growing/hacking it. After storing the arguments in variables, this script will call nuke() and brutessh() (if the player has the BruteSSH.exe program) on the target server in order to gain root access to it. Then, the script will continuously weaken(), grow(), and hack() the target server based on the "threshold" values that were passed in by arguments.